Friday, August 30, 2013

Chess in Murray - Calloway Co. 2013

See General Information (upper left) for future revisions
Here is the current status.  I will try to keep it up to date.  If I have any additions or errors please let me know.
October 26 we will have a major tournament.  Next Feb. (or so) we will have the 2014 County Championships
If you want your email or phone number to not appear here with the chess group please let me know.
What we are hoping for is to get parent – teacher volunteers to manage each of the classes - clubs – meeting sessions.  I will call such persons managers.  In schools it means sponsor.  Sponsor does not have to be a player if someone else (a parent?) can be the coach.
If we can get persons who will do the managerial parts we will have a better chance of getting coaches because we can assure them that they will only need to teach while someone else maintains order.
Please send this to people who are interested and send their email addresses to me: wcbell@mail.com
Someone who can do it should create a facebook page about all this.
Activity                              where                   When                   open to                 manager              Coach  
Mur-Cal Website (blog)   http://mur-calchess.blogspot.com/   you all               W. Bell and you
Chess Column                    Ledger                  Mondays              all                          W. Bell
Murray-Calloway CC       Curris Ctr             5-7 Mon               all                          Leaders                W. Bell
                                             Switch to Cal. Co Library later this year                                     group                    tutors
MSU chess Club                Curris Ctr             6-9 Wed               All                         Rett Weber          Open
MHS  chess Club                MHS                     ? ?                         MCS                     Lauren Hines      Open
                                                                                                         students
MMS  chess Club              MMS                    3-4 Thur               MMS                    Martin Son          Mr. Son
                                                                           Begin Sept 12     students               Sheri Muehleman
Home Schoolers                                                    ????                 ?????                   James Hereford  
                                                                                                                                    herefordl2003@gmail.com           
Schools with no clubs
People who are interested in having a club at a school they are listed beside with contact info.  If we get several people interested they will have a better chance of persuading their principal to find a sponsor.

MES                                     CC E                     CC N                     CC SW                
CC Middle                          La Dawn Hale                                   227-7087             lhale2@email.uky.edu
             David   Mikulcik                             753-3211                mikulcik@amerion.com
CC HS                                 David   Mikulcik                      753-3211                       mikulcik@amerion.com

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The rules


Thanks to Matthew Cooper we now have a nice set of rules on the blog that you can download and use to teach children the moves of the pieces.

September Meetings.


The September leader is Ed Thome.                                  nightly leader

Sept 2         cancelled for labor day

Sept 9         meeting    Mississippi Room CC                       ___leaders meeting  ____

Sept 9         meeting    Mississippi Room CC                      _________Thome  ____

Sept 16       meeting   Mississippi  Room CC                     _______Jenny Holcomb________

Sept 23       meeting    Mississippi  Room CC                    _______???__________

Sept 30       meeting    Mississippi  Room CC                    _______Thome and ?__________

meeting place

The MSU CC and (for two months) the Mur-Cal chess club will generally return to the Mississippi Room with only occasional placement next door in the Cumberland Room.

A new star

This was posted by Randas Burns on the Kentucky Chess Association web site. Very magnanimous  of Randas. 



- My last bit of new involves a player that might not be well known to everyone. This player is Josiah Hereford. From January 2012 to today, Josiah has risen his rating from 928 to 1821. That means in the last 20 months he has gained 893 points at 14 events. In most of the events he is upsetting or drawing players much higher rated than himself. For instance this past Saturday at the "Dog Days of Summer" Open in E-town I watched this player compete against a master and two experts and score 2.5 points. I had the unlucky task of having to play him in the last round but I was fortunate to win. Regardless of my win Josiah picked up 117 pts and moved into the A class. Watch out for this kid. He's coming to a tournament near you.

Monday, August 26, 2013

August meetings


August Leader Jim Hereford  293-3999                                  nightly leader

Aug 5         meeting    Cumberland Room CC          _______James Hereford__________

Aug 12       meeting    Cumberland Room CC          _______James Hereford__________

Aug 19       meeting    Cumberland Room CC          _______Tammi Blalock___________

Aug 26       meeting    Cumberland Room CC          _______Jenny Holcomb__________

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

August 12 column exercises


Double rook type checkmates
 

XABCDEFGHY
8-+-+-+-+(
7+-+-+-+-'
6-+-+-+-+&
5+-+k+-+-%
4-tR-+-+-+$
3wQ-+-+-+-#
2-+-+-+-+"
1+-+-+-mK-!
xabcdefghy
 
1.  White to move and checkmate in 4 moves.  Notice that first the rook hems the king into the upper 4 rows, then the queen pushes the black king back off of the fifth row (counting from the bottom), then the queen hems the black king into three rows and the rook pushes him back.  The active piece is the one holding the black king back and the inactive piece is the one White wants to move.  This is an example of using your inactive pieces.
 
 
 
 
XABCDEFGHY
8-+-+-+-+(
7+-+-+-+-'
6-+-+-+-+&
5+-+-+-+-%
4-+-+k+-+$
3+R+-+-+-#
2-+-+-+-+"
1tR-+-+-mK-!
xabcdefghy

2.  White to move and checkmate more than 4 moves.  The reason is that the Black king should attack the rooks and the rooks will have to move from the left side to the right to the left.  Notice again that the active rook hems the king into the upper part of the board and the inactive one is the piece  that moves to push the black king toward the top of the board. 

Queen type checkmates
XABCDEFGHY
8-+k+-+-+(
7+p+-+-+-'
6p+-zP-sNl+&
5wQ-+-+-+-%
4-+-wq-+-+$
3+-+-+-zPn#
2-+-+-+-zP"
1+-+-+K+-!
xabcdefghy
Whichever player moves first wins.
 Notice that the pattern involves the king being against the edge of the board and is directly between the queen and the edge of the board.  The only thing left is that the queen be protected and not subject to capture.
 
XABCDEFGHY
8-+k+-+-+(
7+p+-+-+-'
6p+-z+-s+l+&
5wQ-+-+-+-%
4-+-wq-+N+$
3+-+-+-zPn#
2-+-+-+-zP"
1+-+-+K+-!
xabcdefghy
Notice that in this position there is no one move checkmate for either player.
 

 

Monday, August 5, 2013

2013 Murray Calloway County Chess Championships

The Mur-Cal Chess Club hosted the 2013 County Championship Chess Championships on Saturday, August 3, 2013 at the Calloway County Public Library. The tournament attracted students from the Murray and Calloway systems as well as home schooled students.  Student awards were based on 2012-13 grade levels.

Nickolas Holcomb (2-0-2) successfully defended his title as the Primary (K-3) Champion.  Mason Lu (2-0-2) edged out the defending champion, Liam Hereford, for the Elementary (K-5) Title , Samuel Lewis (3-0-1) was a full point ahead of all other K-8 students and won the Middle School title.  Benjamen Thome (3-0-1) is the new High School Champion. 

The title of Challenger was won by Wayne Bell and consequently he will play a 4 game match with Josiah Hereford, the current champion, for the title of 2013 County Champion. 

Part of that match will be played at the Mur-Cal Chess Club which meets at the Curris Center on Mondays at 5-7 PM.  For a list of past County Champions see the Mur-Cal Chess Club website http://mur-calchess.blogspot.com/ .  For more information call Wayne Bell at 270-293-7675.